Press Release

During January and February, the George Adams Gallery presents in the Main Gallery, “A Simple Life,” an exhibition of small-scale paintings by Roy De Forest (1930-2007). The 11 paintings in the show, dating between 2000 and 2003, range in size from 24 x 24 inches to 33 x 33 inches and are mounted in the artist's carved and hand-painted frames. Created shortly before the artist’s death in 2007, these portrait-style works focus on De Forest’s favorite subjects of dogs, horses, donkeys, and men, playfully featured in his unique compositions of animated colors and rich mosaic patterns. De Forest, who showed regularly with the gallery since his first exhibition in 1966 (then known as the Allan Frumkin Gallery), is the subject of a retrospective exhibition being organized by the Oakland Museum in California scheduled for 2015.

Concurrently on view in the Drawing Gallery are three paintings and three drawings made between 1960 and 1969. Of particular note are two paintings from the early 1960s, “Lily of the Valley,” (c.1960) and “Untitled” (1961), which introduce several familiar motifs found in De Forest's later work.